You could probably use another test install that other developers have setup such as Marius Ooms (http://sandbox.ywamcloud.com/) or David Cartwright (http://namoo.co.uk/). Though their BP installs might not be running the latest trunk version like testbp.org is.

glad if it’s in addition not a replacement*…because it’s completely different dynamic depending on what you set out for a community. @djpaul will the plugin replace friends once activated or will it be in addition to? I’m thinking about and working on having both options, to friend and then be able to follow specific activities even beyond member activity such as groups, blogs, links, images, topic, searchkeyword….so its not follow member, it’s follow X activity and categorize my followings. anyway just what i’m thinking as how i’d try to use it …either way can’t wait to test it out.

hmm was a little off on that, it seems by default you can send direct messages to anyone regardless of whether or not they are friends (can you easily block people from sending you messages? seems like that would have to be standard) Can you block people from following you?

So I guess in order to see someones profile though they have to follow you back?

@andy
I am following actually a few people here at buddypress.org , but I do not receive e-mail-notifications on updates of those people I am following.
So what is the point of following someone at buddypress.org ?

“Follow” functionality request: allow members to follow Blogs, Forums, Galleries, and just about everything else offered with Buddypress, not just Members.

I’d love to be able to Follow my favorite blogs, forum discussions, etc. It’s more specific than just following a member and more dynamic than just adding as a Favorite. Ideally, there could be “Follow this ____ ” buttons all over buddypress and even tabs showing the number of followers for a given item.

now that’s a really nice idea! You couldn’t be a friend of a blog, but you could basically follow anything!! It’d open up a lot of possibilities if the followers plugin provided an api for other plugins to hook into… Now, if we could only get our itchy hands on the little bugger…

Looking at my own site, here are some of the kinds of things it would be cool to Follow:
Blogs
Forum Discussions
Forum Tags
Tags and Categories from blogs
Groups
Members
Albums/Galleries
Links Lists
…
This would make it really easy to keep track of everything…which right now is a huge pain!

– Follow a Forum-thread = Subscribe to a specific Forum-thread. Would be cool to have……if it is simple to understand for users.
– Drop in “most followed Forum-Threads” , “most followed Blogs”, “most followed Users” , “most followed Group”, etc.
– This would replace what once has been “most active” , “most popular”.
– Skip the “Favourite” stuff.

– the followers plugin provides the api
– other plugins implement the api

This way it doesn’t really matter what else you would like to follow…
You coule have blog posts, whole blogs, events, jobs, members, forums, forum threads, activity items or whatever else plugin authors can come up with…